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An editor passed me a clipping from an American publication with a short passage about silly names of jobs. The U.S. Department of Labor recognizes asparagus sorters, toe pullers, specimen bosses and more.

Perhaps there’s a Canadian parallel?

I struck gold with the National Occupational Classification, a monster list of official job titles at Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

There are 520 basic job categories (teacher, truck driver, and so on). But within those there are 30,000 titles of specific jobs, some of them odd: worm picker-packer.

It’s easy to play this for a cheap laugh. But as I looked for occupational silliness, it struck me that this is a portrait of who we are in Canada.

We live in a society where every child is supposed to get first an education, and then a job in some forward-looking field. They’re all going to stare into computer screens and make pots of money.

Sure, I’m exaggerating, but look around you. Remember when the cod fishery went south and governments said don’t worry because we’ll train all the unemployed fishermen in computer skills? It’s an eerily homogeneous view of society.

But this federal jobs list intrudes with a healthy dose of reality. Let’s take a look.

• Because it’s alphabetical, a lot of related jobs are listed together. Anyone in a factory where they assemble things is listed under “assembler,” then a comma, then the name of the product.

Or do these jobs still exist? If you travel through southwestern Ontario, you’ll find that the plants that used to make tires in Kitchener are gone, along with the factories that made auto parts in London and St. Thomas, and the big assembly plants as well: Ford in St. Thomas, Mack Trucks in Kitchener, big yellow Champion graders and snowplows in Goderich.

Macdonald, Dettwiler and Associates in Brampton still makes space robotics, but how many Canadarms can we sell?

Perhaps this list is a snapshot of where we have been, but not necessarily what we do today.

• There are heads of departments of universities, but here’s a true oddity: The list recognizes the chairman, -woman, or -person of just six departments: physics, linguistics, geography, food science, visual arts and theology. Take that, history department!

• Some of these occupations are unknown to the computer age. A bucket-chucker is apparently someone in the woodworking business. But try tell that to my computer, which wants to correct the spelling to “chuckler.”

• Poet is a recognized occupation. Good for Canada.

• So is canoeist. Note that this doesn’t mean someone who gives canoeing lessons. It just means that paddling a canoe is itself an occupation, perhaps loaded with manufactured goods westbound and furs eastbound. Or perhaps in the Olympics.

• There’s a ditch cleaner but no ditch digger.

• It’s useful to remember that our neighbours work with dirty, gross or bloody materials. I’m in a nice clean office, but that’s because I don’t have to clean up other people’s messes and I don’t have to kill livestock.

Others do: the animal eviscerator, the cesspool cleaner, the chicken plucker. The New Economy doesn’t give such people much respect, but they work, pay taxes and vote in elections.

Somewhere there’s a chair leveller in a furniture factory. A crayon moulder in a crayon factory. And a cadmium liquor maker. Cadmium is a highly toxic metal, so whatever that liquor is, it’s not the kind you drink.

A lot of jobs are listed with hazardous materials. Many use asbestos (for instance, in making brake linings). And you’d be surprised how many occupations involve explosives. A short trip to Wakefield, where they’re blasting Highway 5 through granite hills, shows why.

I’m glad there are epoxy-coating machine operators and cocoa bean roaster-helpers. What a dull place Canada would be if we all designed software or sold mutual funds.

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